Land use pressure and climate impacts on fire regimes and forest regeneration in the upper Tuul River watershed, Mongolia

Increasing temperatures and extreme climatic events such as drought are expected to occur earliest and be most pronounced at higher latitudes and in semi-arid and arid regions. In Mongolia, a nation that relies heavily on livestock production, both 20th-century warming and an increase in fire frequency and extent have been documented. The primary objective of my research is to evaluate the potential interactions of environmental and social variables in driving ecological change (i.e. fire regimes, fuels, and forest regeneration) at the scale of a single watershed. Forest and fire histories are being reconstructed using tree rings at multiple sites in the upper Tuul River watershed (UTRW) in north-central Mongolia. Forest and fire histories were sampled along an interpolated human impact gradient and are being compared to a local tree-ring reconstruction of PDSI (Palmer Drought Severity Index; making use of existing reconstructions from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory Tree Ring Lab’s Mongolian-American Tree-Ring Project [MATRIP] and new reconstructions to be developed as part of an ongoing project in north-central Mongolia [NSF award # 0816700]). These methods will aid in determining relationships between forest dynamics, land use, and climate variation during the 20th-century and to the present. This study will supplement the ongoing NSF-funded project in north-central Mongolia by providing an intense examination of forest and fire history across a human impact gradient at the scale of a single watershed.